Why Giving Back to the Community is the Best Holiday Gift!

The holidays are a time of celebration, a time of laughter, and a time to give back to your community. So how does a social media recruiter like myself give back to his community during the holidays? I do so by acting!

I know, I know; acting isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when you think about volunteering. However, Omaha has a 42-year tradition of helping families from all over the state get into the holiday spirit by seeing A Christmas Carol at the Omaha Community Playhouse. This would be impossible without all of the volunteers.

Over the years, there have been different casts and different directors. The one thing that hasn’t changed is the hard work and dedication that everyone onstage and offstage puts into the show.

You know, I should clear that up a bit more. When I say, “hard work and dedication”, I feel that that doesn’t do justice to what goes into putting on a show for the community. For most of us, this whole process starts way back in August for auditions. From there, we begin the rehearsal process. We are talking about six days a week from 6:30-9:30 P.M. (heck sometimes even 10 P.M.!) where actors are learning music, blocking (stage directions), choreography, or even how to use proper British dialect.

Finally, after all those long hours of rehearsal, we have one final week to put together the finishing touches: trying on costumes and wigs, working with set pieces and props, practicing on the stage with the lighting and sound as well as discovering last minute connections with our characters to make them feel special to us. In the theatre world, this is what we call “tech week”. Once that’s all said and done, we put on six shows a week (two on Sundays) for six weeks in a row.

That’s a lot of time and energy for a 48-person cast. As I mentioned earlier, we do this to give back and to share our passion for theatre. Most of us have jobs during the day, and some of our younger cast members come straight from school and school-related activities to practice for the upcoming shows.

To give you an idea of what a show day looks like for a volunteer actor, I wake up at 5 A.M. every day to do some dishes and pack meals that I prepped on Sunday. From there, I go straight to the gym to make sure I get in a workout of cardio kickboxing or resistance training. I’m usually at work from 7:30 A.M.-5:15 P.M. Once I’m able to step away from work for the day, I run like crazy to make sure I get over to the Omaha Community Playhouse so I’m able to make it to vocal warm-ups and grab a quick bite to eat before the show. After I scarf down my delicious chicken, green beans, and sweet potatoes (a meal that I’m known to eat every night), I gear up for the show by getting into costume and getting into place for opening curtain.

After the two and a half hour performance, I take some time to thank the community for coming and supporting the Playhouse (which is something I love, because you can see them getting into the Christmas spirit right in front of your face). I tend to get home around 10:30 P.M., take a quick shower, and finally hope to be asleep by midnight. Then the next day I wake up and do it all over again!

This is just one story of one busy person who performs in this show. Everyone has their own story about how busy they are and how they still find time to show up and perform. Even though my life gets very hectic and I may be losing out on lots and lots of this thing called sleep, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. We do this for the community. For a lot of people out there, this is something special that has become a family tradition.

I honestly didn’t fully understand the impact that A Christmas Carol had on the community until I was halfway through my first run of the show two years ago. To me, it was just another show I was doing because I love being onstage and performing for others. After talking to generations of families who told me how important it was for them to come here (because they don’t feel like it’s truly the holidays until they have seen us jump around the stage doing the polka for the 200th time), I realized how many people this show has impacted.

Our community made me see that performing this show isn’t about me getting to show off my skills, but instead it’s about a chance to share the holiday spirit with others, and to let people forget about any stress or worries in their lives and just get caught up in the magic.

How do you give back to your communities? Share in the comment section below.